Something Unreal, You Can't Believe

Heroes Remember

Something Unreal, You Can't Believe

Transcript

And that's where we went, from Dieppe to Caen, and from there to, to, to Falaise Gap. Now there, there was heavy, terrible fighting all over there. It was something unreal, you won't believe. There's no way I could tell you, and there's no way that... It's just something unreal that you can't even believe. I often... I often, when I watch a, a football game, and they all hunch down, and they're all ready to go, and then when the ball's... and they all bang into each other and they all start falling on top of one another... Well when the infantry goes in and sometimes a machine gun opens up on them, that's exactly the way the poor soldiers go. Somewhat, just as you look at that. If somebody, they had a soldier's uniform and a machine gun opened up, that's what I, that's the way I see it. And there was all that, all the way through, from one time to the other, and from this and that and you were scared. I... I never went a day that I wasn't scared. I was really scared, yes. Now, how do I define "scared"? I don't know. It's... it's... I really wanted to go home. But you couldn't go home. You had to go forward. Interviewer: Is there one time that you got scared more than another? Oh, when you heard the... yeah. First, when you heard the bombing and that in England, it wasn't, we weren't that scared. But after when the shellfire, and 88's off the tanks, off the Tiger tanks and the stationary, and the moaning minnies, when you, they started whistling, yes. You prayed, you incidentally had to change your drawers and that quite often. In other words, you, you, you, you peed your pants more times than enough, and then you had a hard time finding a place to wash them or what to do. There's many a time I prayed, and cried, hugging a hunk of cement or what you could hug. Yes, yes. You were scared. Real scared. When the, when the moaning minnies come in, boy, when they blew up and the 88s and... Yeah, you were scared.

Description

Mr. McNiven explains how football players remind him of soldiers, and defines how scared he was.

John Percy McNiven

Mr. McNiven was working as a truck driver in Regina, Saskatchewan, before the Second World War began. As propaganda increasingly encouraged young men to join the service, one weekend evening Mr. McNiven and a friend worked up the courage to join. After basic training as a truck driver and mechanic, Mr. McNiven rejected the opportunity to serve in Canada and instead entered the Signal Corps. in order to make it overseas. After completing signaller training, Mr. McNiven was sent overseas to northern England to reinforce 2nd Division. Eventually the division shipped out, destined for Juno Beach. Since 2nd Division was part of the 3rd wave behind 1st and 3rd Divisions, the fighting at the beach had finished by the time Mr. McNiven reached shore. From there Mr. McNiven served in a special force of signallers, working with three others in the division. As the War progressed the division worked its way across France and Holland, and eventually into Germany where they were when the War ended.

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